The Machine That Controls You

Truthisscary

In “The Machine Stops,” first published in 1909, author E.M. Forster describes a future Earth where most inhabitants live in isolated cubicles beneath ground. A respirator is required to visit the surface, though most people never have a desire to do that, being content to remain home where all necessary comforts and social activities (endless lectures on mundane topics) were made possible by “The Machine.”

Eventually, people forgot they had constructed The Machine. They began to worship it, to obey it without challenge, until the day it failed and left them once again in charge of their own agenda.

Forster’s work is now hailed as brilliant, as having predicted the Internet, email, VOIP, and all those technologies entail. But is there also a warning in The “Machine Stops.” A warning that could be ominous as we all get on board and ride the wave into a virtual society where going outside, as Forster says in his story, “is vulgar and perhaps faintly improper: it is unproductive of ideas, and has no connection with the habits that really matter.”

Where Have All the Children Gone?

Anyone alive 40 years ago can tell you that a snow day at school meant playing in the yard and sliding down any slope available on makeshift sleds. Drive through any neighborhood on a snow day now, though, and you will be hard-pressed to see a child outside at all. The kids are inside playing video games and chatting with their friends.

Temporarily set aside, if you will, the urge to embrace the computer age as technological bless. Consider these very real consequences of our global addiction.

How Do You Pull the Shades?

From hackers who use your personal information to steal your identity to stalkers who gather personal information for sometimes malicious means, less and less about your life is protected from online viewing. Do you want to see exactly where someone’s home is and how the house is situated on the property? Search on the address. Results can range from embarrassing to fatal.

Who Are We?

Dr. Sherry Turkle begins by pointing out our many-sided natures in this post-modern world, goes on to claim that children have taken on a closer relationship to computers than ever a machine was granted before, and finishes by saying, “People can get lost in virtual worlds. Some are tempted to think of life in cyberspace as insignificant, as escape or meaningless diversion. It is not. Our experiences there are serious play. We belittle them at our risk.”

Virtual worlds can affect us to the core. Parents have allowed real children to starve while tending to a family online. Surely an aberrant event, but is there a deeper hidden threat? Are those acts symbolic of a deeper threat, one that would have us shun reality in favor of fantasy?

What is the Future?

“Excessive, unmonitored use of computers can place children at risk for harmful effects on their physical, social, and psychological development. Children need physical activity, social interaction, and the love and guidance of caring adults to be healthy, happy, and productive.” That was the advice given by a 2000 article in Children and Computer Technology, a publication of Princeton University. A major factor behind the current obesity epidemic is inactivity and a major reason for inactivity is a national proclivity to sit in front of a computer for hours on end.Nor does there appear to be any real escape possible. Internet connections once required a wire, then became wireless, and are now available anywhere on the planet (no forest too deep, no mountain too high) via satellite connection.

What Can One Do?

Nothing written here, or anywhere, is going to reverse the technological trend. At best, we can be aware of it. At worst, we can be absorbed into it to the point of ubiquity to become, as Forster predicted, “The civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people.”

Yes, there is much to applaud about the age of computers. And, yes, there is much to fear.

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